Theology

Jessica was 19 when she had to tell her parents, both practicing Christians, that she was pregnant. That moment generated a real earthquake in the young woman’s family who, together with her boyfriend at the time, had been strongly involved in the purity movement, an ideology that promotes sexual abstinence until marriage, for religious reasons.

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

I was talking to the man I call Professor and I asked him, "I know you had reservations about getting baptised. Why did you decide to do it anyway? What was the deciding factor?"

It is said that God works through people. I am convinced that the people evoked in connection with my stellar moments—and I really would have liked to name them all—each contributed, in their own way, to my reunion with Divinity.

"We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid." (Christopher Hitchens) 

I thought to myself: Is there an alarm or is it an end of day signal?

Pliny the Elder wrote, in Naturalis Historia, a well-known adage: "Among [mortals] the only certainty there is is that nothing is certain."[1] Few know that Pliny made this statement in a chapter on the gods.

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God. – Isaiah 50:10

Any large-scale phenomenon, such as a pandemic, activates our instinct to preserve our state of being—especially when we feel like we are losing it.

Benjamin Solomon Carson is the famous American neurosurgeon who was the first to successfully separate conjoined twins in 1987.

For centuries, the sacrifice of God the Son and the divine plan for man’s salvation have generated several dilemmas and raised more questions than we could imagine. And the answers that have been found have revealed more implications of the cross than we used to believe, whether we are Christians or non-Christians, believers or skeptics.

In a conversation with Dr. Shelly-Ann Bowen, we discussed her research on what determines whether someone will be active or passive in the face of catastrophic events—fires, floods, or a cancer diagnosis. Social injustice, a lack of self-awareness, and even an immature understanding of faith paralyse action. But there are ways to make positive changes.

In the case of the well-known tension between the church and the younger generation, only one conclusion is possible. It’s not hard to figure out what we’re missing, it’s just hard to accept—on both sides.

Jesus Christ is certainly the most fascinating and controversial person in human history, if we look at how He has been understood throughout the history of Christian thought. But how did Jesus understand Himself?